Get online with Google TiSP!

I don't know if many people noticed Google's April fools prank this year? A small text ad placed under the search box prompted surfers to "Sign up for our free in-home wireless broadband service" which took them to the Google TiSP Beta page. By the way — as I later found out, TiSP stood for 'Toilet ISP'.

While the getting started page entitled 'Going with the flow' was funny, the press release was much better still:

For years, data carriers have confronted the "last hundred yards" problem for delivering data from local networks into individual homes. Now Google has successfully devised a "last hundred smelly yards" solution that takes advantage of preexisting plumbing and sewage systems and their related hydraulic data-transmission capabilities.

Users who sign up online for the TiSP system will receive a full home self-installation kit, which includes a spindle of fiber-optic cable, a TiSP wireless router, installation CD and setup guide. Home installation is a simple matter of GFlushing™ the fiber-optic cable down to the nearest TiSP Access Node, then plugging the other end into the network port of your Google-provided TiSP wireless router. Within sixty minutes, the Access Node's crack team of Plumbing Hardware Dispatchers (PHDs) should have your internet connection up and running.

To be honest, I wasn't at all surprised to see Google offering free broadband (with every man and his dog offering free broadband in the UK it's only a matter of time until Google get in on the act isn't it?); it was only on seeing the toilet that I realised this must be an April fools gag. I have to say I was quite impressed!